Zibaldone
Page 64
For p. 291, margin. “Nemo enim est tam senex, qui se annum non putet posse vivere” [“For no one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year”]. Cicero, Cato Maior, seu de senectute, ch. 7, end. And he says it about farmers, who, even if they are very old, sow for the following year.
What is more remote from the known and ordinary meaning of the Latin verb defendere than the meaning of prohibit in the French défendre, in the Spanish defender, and in the Italian difendere as used in times past? Yet the proper and original meaning of the Latin defendere (*“the very proper meaning of this word in Latin, [600] as Gellius puts it, bk. 9, ch. 1,”* Forcellini says) is very similar, and runs very close to the French and early Italian, and its meaning is: arceo [to keep at a distance], prohibeo [to restrain], depello [to drive out], propulso [to ward off], as Forcellini says, and he supplies many examples from authors of different periods. Now, just as the verb prohibeo, which has this same meaning, still had among the Latins precisely that meaning of prohibit or défendre (see Forcellini) so too it is highly likely that the verb defendere combined (if not in the well-known writers, then among the earliest, and among the common people) this meaning along with the one mentioned above. At any rate, it is clear that the use of defendere in French and old Italian for prohibit derives from the ancient, first, and proper meaning of that Latin verb. Even if it was reduced only to meaning prohibit at the origins of our language, it was certainly so reduced by virtue of the unchanging preservation of that ancient meaning, which was no longer known to writers of the period, and hence necessarily known to the common people alone, and which one would believe to have been long since lost, did we not [601] have this proof of its unchanging preservation up until the last period of the Latin language. (2 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 599. “Omnia vero, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis” [“Moreover, whatever happens in accordance with Nature should be accounted good”]. Cicero, Cato Maior, seu de senectute, ch. 19, with regard to the deaths of old people. (3 Feb. 1821.)
Cicero, Cato Maior, seu de senectute, ch. 23: “Et ex vita ita discedo, tamquam ex hospitio, non tamquam ex domo” [“And I quit life as if from a hospice, not from my home”]. From the context I take this to read: At ex vita [But I quit life].
“Quid enim habet vita commodi? Quid non potius laboris? Sed habeat sane: habet certe tamen, aut satietatem, aut modum. Non lubet enim mihi deplorare vitam, quod multi, et ii docti, saepe fecerunt; neque me vixisse poenitet; quoniam ita vixi, ut non frustra me natum existimem” [“For what advantage has life—or rather what trouble does it not have? But even grant that it has great advantage, yet undoubtedly it has either satiety or an end. I do not mean to complain of life as many men, and they learned men, have often done; nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain”]. Cicero, Cato Maior, seu de senectute, ch. 23, in the guise of Cato.
Our mind is incapable not only of knowing but even of conceiving of anything beyond the bounds of matter. Beyond those bounds we cannot, try as we may, imagine a [602] way of being, anything other than nothingness. Suppose we say that our soul is spirit. The tongue pronounces the name of this substance, but the mind does not conceive any idea of it, save this, that it does not know what it is, what kind of thing it is, and how it is. We can imagine a wind, an ether, a breath of air (and this was the first idea the Ancients formed of spirit, when they called it in Greek πνεῦμα, from πνέω [to blow, to breathe], and in Latin spiritus, from spiro; and anima, too, was taken by the Romans to be a wind, just as the Greeks regarded ψυχὴ [soul], derived from ψύχω, flo spiro [to blow] or refrigero [to make cool]). We can imagine a flame. We can pare down the idea of matter as much as possible in order to fashion for ourselves an image of, and a resemblance to, an immaterial substance, but only a resemblance, for neither human imagination nor human reason can attain to the actual substance of that same substance, which we call immaterial, since in the end it is precisely the soul and the spirit that cannot conceive of itself.1 Being therefore in such complete darkness and ignorance as regards everything that is, or is taken to be, outside of matter, how can [603] we be so brazenly confident, and do we have even the most minimal grounds for reassuring ourselves that our soul is perfectly simple and indivisible, and therefore cannot perish? Who told us so? We want the soul to be immaterial, because it does not seem to us that matter can be capable of those effects that we observe and see achieved by the soul. Granted. But all our reasoning stops short at this point, and all our lights are extinguished. Why should we wish to go further, and analyze the immaterial substance, when we cannot conceive what kind of being it is, or how it is, and, almost as though we had subjected it to chemical experiments, judge that it is entirely simple, indivisible, and without parts? And that the parts cannot be immaterial? And that immaterial substances cannot be of markedly different kinds? And so be the immaterial elements of which the said substances are composed, just as matter is composed of material elements. Outside of matter we cannot conceive of anything, and negation and affirmation are equally absurd. Yet I would further ask: how then do we know that the immaterial is indivisible? Perhaps in our mind the immaterial and the indivisible are one and the same? Perhaps they are the attributes of a single idea? [604] First, I have already demonstrated here how the idea of parts is not in any way opposed to the idea of the immaterial. Second, if the immaterial is one and indivisible in essence, is it not divided, does it not have parts, when the immaterial substances, although all equal, are yet many and distinct? In that case there would be no plurality of spirit, and all souls would be a single soul.
All this being the case, how can we say that the soul, granted that it is immaterial, cannot perish on account of its own essential nature? If the spirit as something that cannot be dissolved cannot perish, so too, since it cannot be composed, it can’t begin. A better case is made by those ancient philosophers who, in denying that souls were composed, and could ever perish, were by the same token denying that they could ever have been born, and held that they had always been. The fact is that the soul begins, and evidently is born, indeed it is born little by little, as all things composed of parts are.
Besides, do we not observe the most diverse faculties [605] in the soul? And among them memory, intellect, will, and imagination? One of these may wane, or even perish altogether, and yet the others remain, and life, and therefore the soul, remains. And some are better equipped with these faculties, some worse: how then is the substance of the soul by nature, wholly one and the same?
But these are faculties, not parts of the soul. First, the soul itself is not known to us except as a faculty. Second, if the soul is altogether simple, and, so to speak, equal in each of its parts to the other parts and the same through and through, how can it lose one faculty, one property, while preserving another, and continuing to be? How can this occur, if we claim “cum simplex animi natura esset, neque haberet in se quidquam admistum dispar sui, atque dissimile, non posse eum dividi: quod si non possit, non posse interire” [“that since the nature of the soul is simple, and does not have any admixture of any different or discordant element, it cannot be divided; and if it cannot, then it cannot die”]? (Cicero. Cato Maior, seu de senectute, ch. 21, end, from Plato).1 See p. 629, paragraph 2.
To sum up, aside from the express will and might [606] of a Master of existence, there is no reason at all that the soul, or any other thing, even presupposing and notwithstanding its immateriality, should be immortal, since we ourselves are unable to discourse on the nature of those beings of which we cannot conceive, and have no possible grounds for ascribing one property rather than another, or one mode of existence—simple or compound, incorruptible or corruptible—to a being placed outside of matter. (4 Feb. 1821.)
“Cum proelium inibitis,” (moneo vos ut) “memineritis vos divitias, decus, gloriam, praeterea libertatem atque patriam in dextris vestris portare” [“When you enter the battle” (I counsel you) “to remember that you
carry in your own right hands riches, honor, glory, and furthermore even liberty and the homeland”]. Words that Sallust (Bellum Catilinarium, ch. 61, others ch. 58)1 places in the mouth of Catiline when he is exhorting his soldiers before battle. Note how different the epochs are. This is the rhetorical figure known as Gradatio.2 Intending to climb ever higher, Sallust puts wealth first, then honor, then glory, then liberty, [607] and finally the homeland, since it is the highest and the most precious of all things. Today, if one wished in similar circumstances to exhort an army, and to employ that same figure, the words would be placed in the reverse order. First, the homeland, which no one has and which is merely a name. Then liberty, which the majority of persons would love, indeed, do naturally love, but are not even used to dreaming of, still less to fostering. Then glory, which is gratifying to a person’s self-love but is in the end a worthless good. Then honor, which we set great store by, but which is willingly sacrificed for some other good. Finally, wealth, for which honor, glory, liberty, homeland, and God are all sacrificed and count for nothing. Wealth, the sole well-founded good for our valiant contemporaries, indeed, the most effective of all, and of all these goods the only one that can whet the appetite, and indeed actually impel even the cowardly to some undertaking. (4 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 465. If you do not want to be left firmly on the losing side, you have to fight on equal terms. Since [608] all the world today is armed with egoism, all, even the most virtuous and magnanimous, must equip themselves with the same weapon if they wish to achieve anything.
For p. 570, beginning. For just as the oligarchs and the optimates used factions, or clients, largesse, and stratagems of every kind to defeat the plebs, with whom power lay, and did so with their joint forces, so those few with whom power now lies use egoism and πλεονεξία [greed], unavoidable when virtue and nature have disappeared from the world, and cannot even agree as to the common interests of this small society, whose exclusive good had been their goal. And with each person pursuing his own good, they divide once again into parties, and the victorious party then further subdivides for the same reasons, until sooner or later victory and power rest in the hands of a single man, and, since he is indivisible, the government, having at last become a monarchy, assumes [609] a stable form.1 This is what happened in Rome. Men renowned for military or domestic glory, for wealth, power, eloquence, etc., were already practicing a kind of oligarchy, which, once all the others had been eliminated, was restricted to the first Triumvirs, until Caesar got rid of the other triumvirs and restricted everything to himself alone. Likewise with the second Triumvirate. (4 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 590 (6).2 Let us suppose that all the qualities which gave legitimacy to the person who is presumed to be monarch by natural right endured. If another member of that same society, by dint of age or exercise of body or mind, etc. etc., were to acquire the same qualities but to a still higher degree, or even greater and more numerous qualities, the first monarch would lose his supposedly natural right to the monarchy, not only while he was still alive but also while he was still as he had been when he began to reign, and in himself remained in all respects the same. Anyway, he should no longer [610] reign. (4 Feb. 1821.)
Not even self-love is infinite; it is merely indefinite. When I say that it is not infinite, I do not mean with regard to the origin and actual meaning of this word, but with regard to the force we habitually attribute to it, as when we say that God is infinite because he contains the whole of infinity in himself perfectly and in reality. Whereas although man, or any other creature, loves himself without any bounds, and although self-love has neither limits nor measure, either in duration or in extension, nonetheless the human mind, or that of any other creature, is not capable of a feeling that contains the totality of the infinite, and this is what I mean when I say that self-love is not infinite, and that even its having no limits does not mean that our mind has anything infinite about it, any more than that of any animal. And consequently one cannot deduce anything in this regard from the infinity of our longings, itself a consequence of the [611] infinity of self-love mentioned and explained above, or from our infinite, or, rather, indefinite, capacity to love, that is to say, to be pleasantly affected by and drawn to objects, this being a consequence of the infinite love of pleasure, which derives immediately and necessarily from a self-love that is infinite, or without limits or measure. (4 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 112. Before Jesus Christ, or up until that time and also afterward, pagans had never considered society to be expressly and by its very nature an enemy of virtue, in such a way that any thoroughly honest and upright individual would inevitably and without fail find in it either corruption or the utmost risk of being corrupted. And indeed, up until that time the nature of society had not been expressly and wholly such. Study the ancient authors, and you will never encounter this idea of the world as the enemy of the good, which features in every passage in the Gospel, and in modern authors, even profane ones. On the contrary (and they were [612] right about those times), they held society and example to be naturally capable of inciting to virtue, and even of rendering virtuous, those who were not. In short, goodness and society not only did not seem incompatible but appeared to be naturally friends and companions. (4 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 535, end. So too the pleasure of hope is never a present pleasure, not even in its guise as hope. That is, the act of pleasure involved in hope works in the very same fashion as I have observed in the act of present pleasure, or in that of remembrance or reflection on past pleasure. (5 Feb. 1821.)
A person who has no fear of being deceived, trapped, etc., or who assumes and has every confidence that he cannot be, is not really cunning, because he is not therefore aware of and does not properly appreciate the power of his own cunning.
And for the same reason a person who is not modest will never be preeminent in any profession. Modesty, and thinking that one does not amount to much, and believing in one’s heart of hearts that one’s achievements were not all they could and should have been—these for me are signs and [613] hallmarks of a great man, or certainly are qualities inseparable from him. Because the more we have mastered and know thoroughly any profession (even a lesser one), the more we appreciate and can weigh the difficulties, and the better we know how difficult it is to attain the height of perfection. For the difficulties involved in achieving perfection are generally known and understood in every sphere, but they are nowhere so intensely and precisely felt as in a profession that has been thoroughly mastered, since we understand and feel and see all the better how easy it is to go further and further, and to perfect even what we believe to be perfect. In short, the more a man respects and esteems a worthy profession—and he will respect and value it the more, the better he comes to know it—the less he will value himself. Because, in comparing himself not with the other practitioners of that profession (who may not be as good as he) but with the profession itself, he is always left dissatisfied with the comparison, finds himself falling far short of parity, and lowers still further the idea that he has of himself. (5 Feb. 1821.)
[614] “῝Α τοῖς παισὶ τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ ἂν συμβουλεύσειας, τούτοις αὐτὸς ἐμμένειν ἀξίου” [“Whatever advice you would give to your children, consent to follow it yourself”]. Isocrates, πρὸς Νικόκλεα περὶ Βασιλείας λόγος [To Nicocles, on Monarchy]. A very suitable dictum for nearly all fathers, mothers, and educators of our times. (5 Feb. 1821.)
It is a remarkable thing that a man who is deeply unlucky, or disheartened by life, and who has already relinquished and grieved for all hope of his own happiness, but who is not for that reason reduced to the state of desperation that finds rest only in death, is naturally and without any effort drawn to serve and to come to the aid of others, even those toward whom he is indifferent, or whom he actually hates. And not indeed by virtue of heroic energy, since a man in this state cannot muster any mental energy, but in such a way that, no lo
nger having any interest in, or hope for, yourself, you transfer your interest and hope to the affairs of others. You seek in this way to fill your mind, to occupy it, and to restore to it the two sentiments mentioned above, namely, caring for something, or, in other words, purpose, and hope, without [615] which life is not life, does not know itself, and lacks a sense of itself. The fact is that when a man finds himself in such circumstances, that is, despairing not so much to hate himself (which is the ferocity of despair) as to be unconcerned about himself, and to put himself beyond the compass of his own thoughts, not only does he find it gratifying to serve others but he also brings to their affairs (even if, as I have said, they are people to whom he is indifferent) a sort of affection, a sort of commitment, and a longing, etc., which may indeed be listless, because his mind is no longer capable of strong and intense feeling, and yet his state is such that he has never before been so keenly inspired by the good of others. And this occurs just as soon as a man is reduced to this state, and it assumes the form of a sudden change, and it also happens to men tainted by selfishness. In short, the person of others almost wholly replaces in his mind his own person, which has disappeared and is ignored and as if lost, like one who can no longer hope, and is no longer capable of happiness, without which life lacks its goal, and purpose. And the desire, the care, [616] and the hope for happiness—which can no longer be directed at one’s own happiness, now deemed impossible, and which, in the quest for it, would prove useless and therefore no longer able to satisfy the human mind—are now turned toward the happiness of others, and this of their own free will, and without a hint of heroism. And the mind of the man who has missed the goal of happiness and is morally dead rises again to a listless life, but nevertheless he does rise again and he lives in others, that is to say, in the goal of the happiness of others, which has now become his goal. Like those bodies whose blood was bad or unhealthy and which were therefore incapable of life, and which certain doctors used to empty (or proposed to empty) of their own blood and then restore to a measure of health by introducing the blood of another person or an animal. In that way, they almost changed the person, turning one that could no longer live into one that could, and thus preserving the life of a person who in himself was incapable of life.